Communication has evolved to take place in many forms for many purposes. In order to communicate effectively, the presenter must be able to maintain the attention of the message recipient. One method for maintaining the recipient's attention is to make the communication interactive. When a recipient is invited to interact as part of the communicative process, the recipient is likely to pay more attention to the details of the communication in order to interact successfully.
With the development of computers and digital multimedia, the electronic medium has become a popular stage house for narrating stories, generating digital presentations, and other types of communication. Despite the advances in electronics, the art of storytelling as well as communication in general still faces the challenge of finding a way to communicate messages through interaction. For example, print content presentation evolved from lengthy scrolls to bound pages. Digital documents having a variety of media content types need a way to bind content together to present a sense of cohesion. The problem is that most interface designs used in electronic narration applications revolve around undefined multi-layered presentations with no predefined boundaries. New content and storyline sequences are presented to the user through multiple window displays triggered by hyperlinks. This requires a user of an interface to exit one sequence of a story to experience a new sequence. As a result, most interactive narratives are either very linear where interaction is equivalent to turning a page, or non-linear where a user is expected to help author the story. In either case, the prior art does not address the need for binding multiple types of content together in a defined manner. These interactive narratives are overwhelming because a user must keep track of loose and unorganized arrays of windows.
One example of a digital interactive narration is the DVD version of the movie Timecode. Timecode takes a traditional film frame and breaks the screen into four equal and stationary frames. Each of the four frames depicts a segment of a story. A single event, an earthquake, ties the stories together as do the characters as they appear in different screens. The film was generated with the idea that sound presented in the theatrical version of Timecode would be determined by the director and correspond to one of the four channels at various points in the story. The DVD released version of the story contains an audio file for each of the four channels. The viewer may select any one of the four channels and hear the audio corresponding to that channel. The story of the Timecode DVD is presented once while the DVD is played from beginning to end. The DVD provides a yellow highlight in one corner of the frame currently selected by the user. Though a character may appear to move from one channel to another, each channel concentrates on a separate and individual storyline. Channels in the DVD are not combined to provide a larger channel.
The DVD release of Timecode has several disadvantages as an implementation of an interactive interface. These disadvantages stem from the difficulty of transferring a linear movie intended to be driven by a script into an interactive representation of the movie in DVD format. One disadvantage of the DVD release of Timecode involves channel management. When a user selects a frame to hear the audio corresponding to that frame, there is no further information provided by the DVD regarding that frame. Thus, a user is immediately subjected to audio relating to a channel without any context. The user does not know any information about what a character in the story is attempting, thinking, or where the storyline for that channel is heading. Thus, a user must stay focused on that channel for longer periods of time in hope that the audio will illuminate the storyline of the channel.
Yet another disadvantage of the Timecode DVD as a narration is that no method exists for determining the overall plot of the story. None of the channels represent an abstract, long shot, or overview perspective of the characters in the story. As a result, it is difficult for a user to determine what frame displays content that is important to the storyline at different times in the movie. Although a user may rapidly and periodically surf between different channels, there is no guarantee that a user will be able to ascertain what content is most relevant.
Yet another disadvantage of the DVD release of Timecode as an interactive interface is that the channels in the Timecode DVD do not provide any sense of temporal depth. A user can not ascertain the temporal boundaries of the DVD from watching the DVD itself until the movie within the DVD ends. Thus, to ascertain and explore movie content during playback of the movie, a user would have to manually rewind movie scenes to review a scene that was missed in another frame.
Another example of a multimedia interface is a research project called HyperCafe, by Sawhney et al., Georgia Institute of Technology, School of Literature, Communication, and Culture, College of Computing, Atlanta, Ga. HyperCafe replaces textual link properties for video links to create an interactive environment of hyperlinks. Multiple video windows associate different aspects of a continuous narrative. The HyperCafe experience begins with a small number of video windows on a screen. A user may select one of the video windows. Once selected, a new moving window appears displaying content related to the previously selected window. Thus, to receive information about a first video window in HyperCafe, a user may have to engage several windows to view the additional video windows. Further, the video windows move autonomously across a display screen in a choreographed pattern. The technique used is similar to the narrative technique used in several movies, where the camera follows a first character, and then when the first character interacts with a second character, the camera follows the second character in a different direction through the movie. This narrative technique moves the story not through a single plot but through associated links in a story. In HyperCafe, the user can follow an actor in one video window and through another video window follow another actor as the windows move like characters across a screen. The user can also manipulate the story by dragging windows together to help make a narrative connection between the different conversations in the story.
The HyperCafe project has several limitations as an interface. The frames used in HyperCafe provide hyper-video links to new frames or windows. Once a hyper-video link is selected, the new windows appear in the interface replacing the previously selected windows. As a result, a user is required to interact with the interface before having the opportunity to view multiple segments of a storyline.
Another limitation of the HyperCafe project is the moving frames within the interface. The attention of a human is naturally attracted to moving objects. As the frames in the HyperCafe move across the screen, they tend to monopolize the attention of the user. As a result, the user will focus less attention towards the other frames of the interface. This makes the other frames inefficient at providing information while a particular frame is moving within the interface. Further, the HyperCafe presentation has no temporal depth. There is no way to determine the length of the content contained, nor is there a method for reviewing content already presented. Once content, or “conversations”, in HyperCafe is presented, they are removed and the user must move forward in time by choosing a hypervideo link representing new content. Also, there is no sense of spatial depth in that the number of windows presenting content to a user is not constant. As hypervideo links are selected by a user, new windows are added to the interface. The presentation of content in HyperCafe is not defined by any structured set of windows. These limitations of the HyperCafe project result from the intention of HyperCafe to present a ‘live’ performance of a scene at a coffee shop instead of a way of presenting and binding several types of media content to from a presentation.
Further, the hyper-video links may only be selected at certain times within a particular frame. HyperCafe does not provide a way for reviewing what was missed in a previous video sequence nor skipping ahead to the end of a video sequence. The HyperCafe experience is similar to viewing a live stage-like viewing where actors play out a story in real time. Thus, a user is not encouraged to freely experience the content of different frames as the user wishes. To the contrary, a user is required to focus on a particular frame to choose a hyperlink during the designated time the hyperlink is made available to the user.
Yet another example of a multimedia interface is the TED9 report. The TED9 report includes multiple windows and is interactive, it does not provide mapping features, annotation capability, or authoring capability. Further, TED9 over-populates windows by providing for windows that contain multiple video segments and content types for several channels. TED9 manages the multiple video segments by serially displaying images in 2.5 second increments within the channel containing the video segments, wherein each image is a link to the video it represents within the channel. To view a video segment within such a channel, a user must select an image associated with the desired segment at a time when the image is displayed in the channel. Upon selecting an image within this channel, a button appears near the channel prompting the user for further input to view the video segment. Only after providing input to select the image and then input to select the prompt button to play the video is the content presented to a user in those channels. In these channels, TED9 does not allow a user to view one of multiple video segments within a channel without providing input selecting an image and prompt button. Further, TED9 requires selection buttons to navigate its interface and does not provide any dynamic information regarding channel videos and images. When a user selects a video or image in TED9, a one-line title appears below the channel describing the video or image. The title does not change throughout the presentation of the video or image.
What is needed is an interactive narration interface that addresses the limitations and disadvantages of the prior art.